This is another reason why deflation is bad! When prices drop, we seem to always end up subsidizing somebody: Farmers, Oil drillers, wind farms, bankers, etc. And some beeks think electricity prices are going through the roof :?

I completely agree with the article; it is ridiculous to subsidize dumb investments by the 1%er, like the wind mills (and solar cells). When those guys make a bad bet, they should get just as much compensation for losses as I get when I make bad bets and loose money: which is $0. As usual the system to rigged so they never lose money; I’m sure that was in the fine print of the contract :evil:

Even Boone Pickens didn’t expect Natural Gas prices to implode like they have done. Really nobody predicted such a huge drop in NG prices. That alone puts the kibosh on all other power sources for generating electricity. Now if somebody can only get the stuff to power our cars and trucks in an efficient manner we'll be on easy street for while :)

"Tell me and I'll forget,show me and I may remember,involve me and I'll understand" Chinese Proverb

"The farmer is the only man in our economy who buys everything at retail, sells everything at wholesale, and pays the freight both ways." John F. KennedyFranklin County Beekeepers Association MA. http://www.franklinmabeekeepers.org/

The only way to store Alternating Current electricity is to store the energy source that produces it. Green energy like wind and solar are totally dependent on the wind blowing and the sun shining. No way to store them so they must be used when present. Water is able to be stored for times when it isn't raining.But the enviromentalists worry too much water through the dams turbines kill too many fish,but also now say to much water over the spillway will over oxygenate the water,potentially harming the fish. However we also know raging torrents without the dams will stir up silts that harm fish.It has more to do with the dams and making them pay than it does with excess energy.If the power grid in this country were to be updated,perhaps the excess energy could have been transported a further distance and sold to users ,rather than charge the Northwest consumers for their excess production.

Electrical power can be stored away as potential energy behind a dam by pumping water in reverse. When more electrical power is needed in the future, that potential energy can be recovered by flowing that water down through the darn and spinning a generator. However in general, as Buzz says, it's not practical to store electrical energy.

I saw on Modern Marvels (TV show) that some power company in Alaska does have a massive battery bank to store some electrical energy, but the sad fact is Batteries don’t hold squat for power. This is why electric cars aren’t taking over anytime soon. DC batteries can provide AC power via an inverter.

The Northwest did attract some of the Aluminum reducers from the Ohio Valley / Pittsburgh area to take advantage of their excess electrical capacity. Making Aluminum consumes massive amounts of electric energy. However after Enron created that fake energy crises on the west coast, the AL companies may have just packed up and moved to China.

.....The greatest changes occur in their country without their cooperation. They are not even aware of precisely what has taken place. They suspect it; they have heard of the event by chance. More than that, they are unconcerned with the fortunes of their village, the safety of their streets, the fate of their church and its vestry. They think that such things have nothing to do with them, that they belong to a powerful stranger called “the government.” They enjoy these goods as tenants, without a sense of ownership, and never give a thought to how they might be improved.....

we also got some server farms because they require lots of power. they built close to the Bonneville dam.

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.....The greatest changes occur in their country without their cooperation. They are not even aware of precisely what has taken place. They suspect it; they have heard of the event by chance. More than that, they are unconcerned with the fortunes of their village, the safety of their streets, the fate of their church and its vestry. They think that such things have nothing to do with them, that they belong to a powerful stranger called “the government.” They enjoy these goods as tenants, without a sense of ownership, and never give a thought to how they might be improved.....

The wind farms are close to me. The dams for some reason get priority, which makes no sense as they have stored power as in the water held back. But the Columbia is a big river. A shame to see those majestic windmills sit idled. But it only seems to occur in the spring of big runoff years.

Frankly, they should put in a huge offshore setup, the wind never stops out there.

Part of the problem is the power grid is not able to disperse all the power when the wind is blowing and the water is running high. Meanwhile Phoenix is getting brown outs from air conditioner use.

Every inch that electrical current travels over a wire, you waste power due to Ohmic heating of the wires. This is why Edison’s DC power system failed and why Telsa’s AC power system (via Westinghouse) took over the world.

With AC power you can easily step up the voltage to cut down on current flows over the transmission wires. This allows for longer distance xfer of power without excessive Ohmic losses. However even with AC you STILL waste power over the transmission lines! This is combated by going to higher and higher voltages, but there is STILL a limit to how far you can transmit electrical power over wires.

You can’t put windmills in Timbuktu and hope to power homes in Kalamazoo.

... Even Boone Pickens didn’t expect Natural Gas prices to implode like they have done...

I think he saw it coming and since Pickens owns so much natural gas production potential he was trying to get out in front of the problem by jazzing up demand for his product. The same thing would happen to gasoline prices with Obama out of the way.

I had been thinking ever since I heard that natural gas prices were going way low due to production, that T. Boone was saving his bacon by trying to get more people burning it. He knew it was coming and he was looking for more market to sell to.

Pickens lost his proverbial shirt betting on windmills. Luckily he’s a billionaire and can afford to lose a few hundred million here and there. As the OP suggests, the government almost always make sure the big guys don’t lose money and hence subsidize them with us poor tax payers when things don’t play out as they hoped.

Pickens started up a company to build natural gas filling stations across the country to refuel the trucker’s big rigs. I won’t plug the name or the stock since it looks way overvalued to me, but then again so does Apple stock. Since the big trucks use so much fuel, it makes strong economic sense for them to scrap their diesel engines and switch over to CNG, or a CNG + Diesel hybrid. The business model looks like a good idea at this point, but who knows what tomorrow will bring! We can’t have Chesapeake energy and all their stock options going belly up either so there will be lots of forces trying to open up LNG plants for NG exports. Prices don’t go up here until a lot of excess supply is removed from the market.

... Pickens lost his proverbial shirt betting on windmills. ...Pickens started up a company to build natural gas filling stations across the country to refuel the trucker’s big rigs... Since the big trucks use so much fuel, it makes strong economic sense for them to scrap their diesel engines and switch over to CNG, or a CNG + Diesel hybrid....

There is only one dinosaur in Pickens’ NG ointment but it’s a biggy. That stumbling block is that LNG is not a robust fuel on either a volume or on a per weight basis compared to diesel oil.. That means that huge new and did I mention HEAVY fuel tanks will be needed to hold more (highly pressurized) liquid natural gas. Furthermore larger engine displacements will be required to wring the same amount of work from an increased amount of fuel. This results in a decrease in the net cargo weight that can be hauled by big rigs. Don’t plan on raising truck weight limits either. The geriatric RV owners and their seeing eye dogs will howl Bloody Murder at any bill in Congress that will increase allowable truck weights on the same interstates where RVs operate . The up side is that natural gas powered commercial transportation is a job creator. The reason being all the new Slow Truck Lanes that will need to be gouged out of existing Interstate right-of-ways.

When it absolutely, positively, has to be there on time… better not ship it LNG.